Review #799: Assassin's Creed Unity

 The dad joke has gone on long enough.

 A lot has been said about Assassin's Creed Unity, and... well, I decided to play the game unpatched, as I always do, and it turned out not to be all that bad.It has issues to be sure, but it's a solid entry into the franchise. To think that back when this game was first announced I was midway through Assassin's Creed IV and it looked so good that I wanted to get a PS4 just for this game alone.... which I wouldn't do until a few more years passed, and not like it would matter since it received very poor reviews.

 The story pits you as Ezio Auditore da--I mean, Ezio's expy, Arno Dorian, another rich kid who's dad gets murdered by Templars, and later on, his adoptive dad gets murdered by the Templars which kick off his revenge story set during the French Revolution. Heck, even Arno's personality matches Ezio as a loveable rogue, albeit with a bit of a loser's streak. Arno even looks like Ezio when unrobed, and to be honest, I think it was done on purpose since they were playing it safe. Y'know, ever since they killed Desmond and ruined any potential the present-day sections had, the last few entries(IV, Rogue) were very cheesy in how they played out, and the whole Ubisoft as Abstergo and the player playing a videogame being part of the plot thing feels like a dad joke that has been going on for too long. Ubisoft didn't know what to do with Desmond, now they don't know what to do with Juno.... so just ax the modern day segments, we're here for the past adventures. Regardless, the modern day segments in this game are very brief, but just as cheesy, cutscenes of the Assassin Bishop contacting you and asking you to play through Arno's memories for her. I mean... I think I'm OK with this. All that said, as much as I ribbed on Arno's story for being a new take on Ezio, I actually thought the plot was decent, and I enjoyed the supporting cast. It's not the best plot of an AC game, but it's entertaining for what it is.

 Unity feels a lot like Assassin's Creed 2, and I say that as a good thing. It's been a while since we had a proper Assassin's Creed, as much as I enjoyed III, the buildings just weren't as tall as we had gotten used to, and IV and Rogue were brilliant, but they didn't really feel like Assassin's Creed. Paris is gorgeous and it's a blast to explore, this might very well be the largest map in an AC game yet. Heck, it might be a bit too big, for the first time in an AC game... I actually gave up on collecting every needless short dopamine burst collectible. But then again, I got a bit annoyed at the fact that revealing a district, by climbing to a particular tower or high building and "synchronizing" didn't reveal every single collectible or mission in the district. It'd reveal a few, but not all of them, and aimlessly running around hoping to come across one of the hundreds of useless collectibles isn't really my idea of fun. Plus, the map lies, sometimes it might tell you that you're missing a mission or two in a district.... but that mission is actually found on another district. It made no sense, it annoyed me and thus, I gave up. It's OK, I got most of the cockades, which unlocked colors for Arno's clothes, and got 80%+ of the chests, chests that only give you a modest sum of money(Although a very rare few contain equipment pieces). Speaking of chests, man, were Ubisoft really hoping you'd play their game online! Some chests can only be opened through Uplay and others can only be opened by playing on the companion app, Initiates. I did neither, screw you, Ubisoft. An annoyance of their push towards online on a mostly Single Player game comes in the inability to Suspend the game. That's right, you can't suspend the PS4 with this game running.

 Collectibles aside, the rest of the game plays as you'd expect, it's a parkour heavy open world action adventure game in which you accept missions and pursue the story. Besides the collectibles, there are a fair amount of side missions to partake in: Murder Mysteries, which get a bit tedious since the hint popups overlap each other during investigations, Riddles, which are incredibly hard to figure out without a guide, various assassination/robbery missions, Building renovation missions(Just pay a fee and then complete 3 side missions) and Helix Rifts, which are silly timed maps in which you must gather "data" before exiting. There are also two types of multiplayer missions, which can thankfully be played offline although their size makes them kinda boring in single player, Heists and Co-Op. Heists are about collecting valuables while trying to remain unseen, while Co-Op missions are more akin to normal side missions but bigger in scope, albeit with cringy introductory dialogue by Bishop. Since Ubisoft really wanted you to play online, each co-op mission has exclusive skill points to find, so you'll want to play them to upgrade Arno, as well as equipment rewards... with three rewards per mission, although you can only get one, so if you want every reward you have to play every single co-op mission three times. Lame.

 Ubisoft made a big stink out of animations being expensive being the reason for no playable female assassins but.... I recognized a ton of animations from previous games. At least the new animations are pretty neat, Arno likes to twirl sometimes when climbing roofs. Parkous has been tweaked a bit, Arno is, like every playable character before him, still a bit sticky, so controls aren't perfectly smooth just yet, sometimes you'll get stuck trying to climb things or trying not to climb things, which are things that I feel are unavoidable when making such a free flowing parkour system that lets you climb pretty much anything. The new tweak comes in the form of Parkour Up and Parkour down. Holding down the X button while running will make Arno take routes that go up, while holding circle will make him take routes that go down. It's a pretty small tweak, but I think it works pretty well. Combat is like AC IV but less rigid, enemies are back to health bars, thank god, so you no longer need to 'finish' them in order to kill them. Initially Arno can only attack, parry and dodge, but through Skills you can get a few more abilities, such as heavy slashes and staggering blows. Sometimes it felt as if my parry inputs didn't register, but it might be a framerate issue, since the game tends to stutter and fall below 30 fps every now and then.

 As for tools, Arno can equip a one handed-blade, a heavy weapon or a long weapon as his main weapon, and a pistol or a rifle for a side arm. It seems that by this time double hidden blades went out of style, so you only get one, but in this era it can be turned into a mini-crossbow, the Phantom Blade, that can also use Berserk Blades to make enemies turn on each other. Them you get smoke bombs to make an escape and cherry bombs to make some noise and distract guards. Rather skimpy, isn't it? Well, everything else is a Skill you must learn by spending skill points earned from story and co-op missions. Heck, the pistol/rifle equipment is a skill. This... this is a bit lame to be honest, y'see, I wanted to get health upgrade skills and lockpicking skills, which meant that for most of the game I had little to no tools. No poison gas, no disguise(Which is a fun new tool!), no money bags. Even double assassinations and air double assassinations, series mainstays since 2, but be gotten as a skill. And double assassinations felt a bit tricky to pull off, something I never felt with previous games.

 Customization was a big selling point of the game, and it's alright but with a few caveats. There are many different pieces(Hood, Chest, Arms, Belt and Boots) you can find, purchase and equip, and a lot of them are really cool.... but they affect your stats, so it's not like you can really equip anything you want. I mean, you can, but you'll get murdered very quickly. As per usual, as soon as I was given control of Arno I opted to do every bit of side content I could before starting the story, although level 3 lockpicks kept me from getting everything, but Sniper enemies could take me out in one shot because my armor wasn't up to snuff. So your stats matter, so taking that into account, the pool of equipment pieces you should use gets reduced quite a bit depending on how useful they are. On another note, the stat bars next to the equipment's description are a LIE, they symbolize how much they affect the stat, if you really want to know what your equipment piece does, you need to read the numbers below the lying stat bars. So a large "Stealth" bar doesn't mean you are stealthier, it could mean that it has boosts to how Eagle Vision works.

 And now.... performance. The game can run very, very poorly. I turned off the internet connection and I don't know if it was a Placebo effect, but the framerate seems to have gotten better. And while it struggles to match 30 FPS, it runs pretty much like AC 2 did on the PS3, so I'm used to it. Frame rate aside, the game only froze once, although a couple of side missions got bugged due to an NPC not spawning correctly or what have ya, so I had to reset the game... because there's no in-game reload checkpoint when not in a Story Mission nor is there a 'Back to main menu" option. The last cutscene in the game became hilarious in my playthrough, because Arno got bugged and his lips wouldn't stop moving, so characters were talking to him, or he was trying to be somber... but his lips wouldn't stop moving! One time, I killed an enemy on the roof, and I went to loot him, but Arno hadn't exited combat yet and something weird happened.... the camera got fixed in its place while Arno started running ON the air towards nothingness. If I stopped touching the analog stick he'd stop, but it didn't matter where I pushed the analog stick, Arno would only run forward. I hoped that I'd make Arno run out of boundaries, but even tough the textures of the Area the camera got stuck in unloaded.... Arno never got out of boundaries, so I had to reset the game. Lastly, the bug I came across the most, sometimes Arno would get teleported somewhere far behind where I was standing. I think it had something to do with an NPC that WASN'T in contact with me pushing me anyways, but I'm not sure, and it happened about 4 times. All in all, it's hardly as bad as people make it out to be. And I'm not claiming that the bugst that were reported weren't real, because there's video footage of it, but it doesn't seem to be as common as most people reported it to be. As for the rest of the game, it's on par with most modern open world games, so it didn't bother me too much. At least I could finish the missions, unlike, say, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.

 Assassin's Creed Unity is a really good Assassin's Creed game. Not the best, not the worst. Paris is an absolute treat to explore, this is one of the most gorgeous game in the series, if not the most. That said, it's quite easy to see that they played it very safe and hoped that multiplayer would carry it. Arno is very similar to Ezio, and the changes to the basic gameplay were pretty small, although very welcome, I quite liked the Parkour up/down system, and I'm so glad we're back to enemy health bars!
 8.0 out of 10